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Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Dr. Maryellen Weimer, professor emerita at Penn State Berks writes, I once heard class discussions described as “transient instructional events.” They pass through the class, the course, and the educational experiences of students with few lingering effects."

Ideas are batted around, often with forced participation; students don’t
take notes; and then the discussion ends—it runs out of steam or the
class runs out of time. If asked a few days later about the exchange,
most students would be hard-pressed to remember anything beyond what
they themselves might have said, if that. So this post offers some
simple suggestions for increasing the impact of the discussions that
occur in our courses.

1. Be more focused and for less time – It’s easy to
forget that students are newcomers to academic discourse. Academics can
go on about a topic of interest for days; hours, if it’s a department
meeting. Students aren’t used to exchanges that include points,
counterpoints, and connections to previous points with references to
research, related resources, and previous experience. Early on, students
do better with short discussions—focused and specific. Think 10
minutes, maybe 15. 2. Use better hooks to launch the discussion – Usually discussion starts with a question. That works if it’s a powerful question—one immediately recognized as a “good question.”
Prompts of that caliber require thoughtful preparation; they don’t
usually pop into our minds the moment we need them. But questions aren’t
the only option. A pithy quotation, a short scenario that requires
content application, a hypothetical case or situation, a synopsis of a
relevant current event—all of these can jump-start a discussion.3. Pause – Stop the discussion and ask students to
think about what’s been said so far, or ask them to write down what
struck them as a key idea, a new insight, a question still unanswered,
or maybe where they think the discussion should go next. Think short
pauses, 30 seconds, maybe a minute. Read more...Source: Faculty Focus

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Hello, my name is Helge Scherlund and I am the Education Editor and Online Educator of this personal weblog and the founder of eLearning • Computer-Mediated Communication Center.
I have an education in the teaching adults and adult learning from Roskilde University, with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human Resource Development (HRD) as specially studied subjects. I am the author of several articles and publications about the use of decision support tools, e-learning and computer-mediated communication. I am a member of The Danish Mathematical Society (DMF), The Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics (DSTS) and an individual member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Note: Comments published here are purely my own and do not reflect those of my current or future employers or other organizations.